Hello, it’s lunchtime in Paris and Emmanuel Macron will take part in a NATO meeting in Brussels, followed by a G7 summit on the war in Ukraine.
What happened yesterday? The two far-right candidates Marine Le Pen (Le Rassemblement National) and Eric Zemmour (Reconquête!) held competing press conferences to present the budgets of their respective platforms.
Why does it matter? With favorable odds to qualify for the second round, Marine Le Pen is trying to solve a credibility problem that manifested itself during her disastrous debate with Emmanuel Macron in 2017. The candidate presented new spending plans such as lowering the fuel tax, financed by getting rid of social security benefits for non-French people – but she acknowledged that she had not found an independent auditing firm willing to validate her figures.
Buckle up, we are about to enter uncharted metaphorical territory. With Emmanuel Macron all but assured to get through to the second round, the only question for now is who his opponent will be. On the left, the situation can be summarized as follows: Can the wise turtle get through a mouse hole? Fans of French politics will know that the “wise turtle” is a reference to the leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise), who made the comparison himself at a rally in February, announcing, “Yes, I am a political wise turtle, I move forward slowly and I exhaust the hares.” The mouse hole is another one of Mélenchon’s favorite metaphors, alluding to his tiny chances of getting to the second round. Could he squeeze through that gap? Not according to the latest Ipsos-Le Monde survey, in which 76% of voters think he won’t make it to the runoff.
Mélenchon entered the race hoping to repeat his 2017 presidential campaign (in which he got very close to the second round), but this time with a happier ending. The historical weakness of the French left at first seemed to present overwhelming odds, but when the nationalist and populist end of the spectrum divided into two camps, with Eric Zemmour competing for votes with Marine le Pen, it reshuffled the deck. It dramatically lowered the qualification threshold for the second round.
When the two far-right candidates were neck-and-neck with 15% of the vote, the “wise turtle” sneaking in through the mouse hole for a runoff with incumbent Emmanuel Macron became a realistic prospect. If Jean-Luc Mélenchon can replicate his 2017 total (19% of the vote), his dreams could come true. Since February, he has appealed to a political reflex known in French electoral lexicon as “le vote utile” (or strategic voting): “Vote for me, even if you hold your nose, and the sky will be the limit”.
His efforts have been met with heavy push-back from center-left candidates, infuriated by past statements from Jean-Luc Mélenchon about Ukraine in which he seemed to lap up most of Vladimir Putin’s narrative. Greens candidate Yannick Jadot and Socialist Anne Hidalgo in particular leapt to attack him. They accused him of happily rubber-stamping anything for enemies of the U.S. and NATO, dictators included.
Now an unexpected move inside the far-right camp is also putting Mélenchon’s strategy into question. The last Ipsos-Le Monde poll published last week showed that the idea of the “vote utile” is gaining ground, this time in the far-right camp. Far-right voters are starting to desert Eric Zemmour for Marine Le Pen – the opposite of what was happening back in February. After months of jockeying, Le Pen is gaining a clear lead. She was smart enough to refocus her talking points on fuel prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while Zemmour is doubling down on immigration, most recently by adopting the provocative slogan of “remigration” (i.e. the deportation of people born abroad).
The bullish trend of Marine Le Pen’s rise has a potentially devastating consequence for Jean-Luc Mélenchon: it could put the second round out of his reach by raising the threshold of qualification. It could deter potential voters, when those who support him are already less certain they will vote for him (58%) than Marine Le Pen’s supporters are for her (71%) or Emmanuel Macron’s are for him (77%), according to the Ipsos-le Monde poll.
Five years ago, he was able to siphon off the socialist candidate’s vote. The then-socialist candidate Benoît Hamon at the time scored the worst-ever result for his party in a presidential election, despite an alliance with the Green party Europe Ecologie-Les Verts. This year, Anne Hidalgo is languishing at only 2% and Yannick Jadot is polling between 5% and 7%. Jean-Luc Mélenchon had the backing of Le Parti Communiste in 2017, but it now has its own candidate with Fabien Roussel and communists voters are very disciplined. Much to its chagrin, in the end the “wise turtle” might run into a closed door.
Graphic of the day
Quote of day
“I refuse to come out in favor of either Joe Biden or Vladimir Putin because neither of them care about the people”
Trotskyist candidate Nathalie Arthaud (Lutte Ouvrière) refused on Thursday to take sides over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Asked who of Russian President Vladimir Putin or U.S. President Joe Biden was right on Ukraine, she said that she refuses “to come out in favor of either party, because neither of them care about the people”. Her party is against the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and international sanctions against Russia. “We kill with poverty, just as we kill with bombs,” she said.
Countdown
17 days until the presidential election’s first round
31 days until the presidential election’s second round
Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.